The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of wartime violence and torture.

In March 2004, Klein went to Baghdad, Iraq to report on the privatization schemes there. Soon after her arrival, the hotel next door to where she was staying was bombed, and she was distracted and frightened by chaos, which pulled her away from her reporting goals. She acknowledges that this is how the shock doctrine works: People are too busy attempting to survive a crisis to pay attention to market reforms.

Klein notes that the public justification for the invasion of Iraq was the argument that Saddam Hussein was attempting to build Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs). However, “intellectuals” justified the invasion on the grounds that it was an opportunity to model and enforce “free-market democracy” (328) in the Middle East, analogously to how Chile was used as a model for imposing Chicago School economics throughout Latin America. Iraq was an ideal starting point because the US had experience invading the country. Klein argues the goal was to destroy Iraq so that a new “model nation” could be built on the ruins.

War as Mass Torture

In 2003, the US invaded Iraq with brutal force, dropping hundreds of bombs on key targets in a media spectacle designed to frighten the Iraqi people.